


Not How You Spell It

by Anonymous



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Barista Chris, Flirting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3846523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris deals with an obnoxiously hot customer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not How You Spell It

**Author's Note:**

> Who doesn't love a coffee shop au?

Monday mornings at the coffee shop were seriously the worse. Chris hated his job on a slow day but to have half awake, Californian zombies bitch out orders made him want to burn the place down. He reminded himself that he was only working here until his acting career took off but it didn’t help that the buttons on the cash register were more difficult today than ever. He really hated those fucking buttons.

“Next!” he called out. A young woman, probably not eighteen yet, was next. He recognized her blue highlights from the week before when it took her ten minutes to figure out she wanted a caramel latte. Luckily the café was empty last time. This time that wasn’t the case.

“Can I have the umm… a mocha caramel, umm… never mind. Wait, what size are the chocolates in the mint chocolate chip frap? Are they like really big or are they the mini ones? Because I don’t like the chunky ones. On second thought-”

“Oh my God! Hurry up!” Chris glared at the customer in the middle of the line. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet and ran his fingers through his dark hair. Clearly he was in a rush and irritable but that was no excuse to act like a dick to the girl.

She blushed in embarrassment after his outburst but otherwise ignored the man. For the next five minutes she examined the menu dozens of times over and still was at a loss at what to order. The obnoxious man muttered under his breath and glared at the girl the whole time. Chris suspected that if the girl was actually paying attention to him she would run away in fear because that man had one hell of a death glare. His bushy eyebrows were particularly menacing. Even he had to look away after a while.

Finally, she ordered a French vanilla decaf much to the line’s relief. The man hollered in joy after she was done and Chris would have called him out if it wasn’t for the fact he would get fired if he did. His boss hated him enough as is.

After the girl, Chris took a few other orders and he only messed up with the buttons _once_. His bad mood began to subside until it was time to serve Mister Obnoxious. The man was now on his phone speaking a mile a minute. Chris waited for the man to hang up so he could take his order but he didn’t. Instead he told the person on the other line to wait a second and turned to Chris and spoke in a terse, demanding voice. “I want a venti vanilla macchiato to go. And make it quick, I actually have important things to do.”

Chris knew working in customer service meant dealing with demanding and nasty people but this guy was definitely up there on the douchiest customers list. But Chris was a professional and smiled at the man and asked for his name so he could write it on the cup.

“Zachary.” He answered.  Zachary quickly went back to his phone conversation and Chris rolled his eyes. The guy pretty much ruined his already horrible day so he decided to do what he did with every bad customer; misspell his name in a very annoying way.

He took out the sharpie and spelled his name Z-A-K-A-R-E-R-I-E. It wasn’t his most creative misspelling but he knew it would annoy the hell out of the guy.

He took two more orders when Zachary’s coffee was done. His co-worker gave it him and the man glanced at the cup in his hands. His eyes practically bugged out when he saw what was written. Zachary looked up and glared at him. Chris grinned cheekily back and laughed as he stormed out of the shop. His day was all downhill from there because that was single handedly the best thing that’s ever happened at his stupid job.

The rest of the week was as horrible as every other but whenever Chris would mess up with the register or make a crappy coffee, all he had to do was remember the look on Zachary’s face. The guy was definitely a douche but the more Chris thought about him, the more he realized that he was a hot douche. In another life he probably would have harmlessly flirted with him but the guy hadn’t come back all week so Chris put him out of his mind.

But by the next Monday, Zachary was back again. He was surprised to see him but was more surprised to see that the guy wasn’t acting obnoxious at all. There was a flash of recognition in his eyes when he saw Chris but then simply ordered his coffee and waited at the long pick up line without a comment.

It was obvious that last Monday was just an off day for him and Chris felt bad for judging him so much. Everyone was allowed to have a couple of bad mornings. He sure had his share.

And while he knew Zachary probably wasn’t a bad guy, he couldn’t help himself from misspelling him name again. It was partly for his own amusement and maybe was partly his attraction to him. His mother did say he used to love pulling girl’s pigtails as a kid.

So he used his sharpie and wrote Z-A-C-A-R-E-E on the cup. A few minutes later Zachary received his drink and shot Chris an amused look. His lips was slightly turned up and his eyebrows were raised. He clearly wasn’t annoyed or angry like last time. Chris didn’t know why, but he smiled back at him and became so distracted his co-worker had to nudge him so he could get back to work.

For the entire week Zachary came and ordered a coffee and every morning Chris would spell his name wrong. Day after day it became more difficult to think of a creative misspelling. He even came home one day and jotted down ideas on how he would spell his name wrong for the next day. But it was worth it to see Zachary’s smile every morning.

By the next Monday he and Zachary had their first conversation. Zachary never came on the weekends, at least not while he was working, and Chris was unnaturally giddy to see him. Over the weekend he was glued to his notepad, jotting down different misspellings of his name to write on his cup in the morning. There was one where he was able to incorporate the letter ‘Q’ that he was particularly proud of. It was bound to get a laugh out of Zachary this time.

The line was especially long this morning but Chris was becoming marginally better at handling the buttons so it was moving at a steady pace. That all ended when Zachary was next in line. Chris smiled brightly at him, not just because he had to, but because he was really looking forward to messing up his name again.   

“May I take your order?” Zachary appeared to be in another place entirely. He was looking at Chris, but his eyes were distant like he wasn’t listening. “Zachary?”

He snapped out of his daydream or whatever he was having and smiled at the blue-eyed cashier. “Sorry. I was thinking.”

“Yeah? About what?”

“On a way to ask you out.”

Chris blushed. He was not expecting this. “Really?”

Zachary’s smile lessened. “You were flirting with me right? With the coffee cup names? Please tell me you were flirting.”

“I mean… kind of? I think you’re hot though.”

“So is that a yes?”

“MOVE THE FUCKING LINE!” They shared a look after the stranger’s outburst and bust out laughing. Chris had yet to see Zachary laugh and realized that he did want to go out with him. The man was on his mind nonstop the past week. He thought he was just pulling pigtails but apparently it was more than that.

“So yes or no? Before you start flirting with this guy too.” Zachary smirked.

“Technically you didn’t ask me anything yet.”

“Really? Technicalities Christopher?”

Chris glared at him. “Wait a second, how do you know my name?” Zachary not so subtly pointed to his name-tag and Chris blushed again. “Oh.”

“Yeah. So what’s your answer?”

Chris pretended to think it over when the stranger called out again. “SAY YES SO I CAN GET MY DAMN COFFEE!”

They laughed again and Chris smiled at him. “Yeah, why not. For the sake of these lovely customers.”

Zachary beamed at him. Chris could stare at him for hours but figured he would probably get fired if he didn’t take more orders immediately. “So are you going to order something before my boss kicks me out?”

“Oh, sure. Just my usual.”

“Name?” Chris grinned.

“Zach,” He could detect Chris’ disappointment immediately. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s just I can’t really mess up your name with only ‘Zach’. And I had a good one too.”

“Well then surprise me, _Kris-tof-fer_.”

“Oh, I think I’m going to like you very much.”


End file.
